Nosedive
by LlamaMathilde
Summary: How do Ranma and the real world mix?


_Ranma characters property of Rumiko Takahashi. This is a work of fan-fiction and is not for profit. _

_-LlamaMathilde_

* * *

Yuri watched the altimeter tick down, keeping his eyes on the numbers and off of the sky rushing by. _Good, good...now. Pull up._ He pulled up on the stick, bracing himself for that singular swoop as the wings caught air again.

Nothing.

He pulled a little harder. The stick slid smoothly back as far as he dared it to. With that much motion he should be practically flipped over. He checked the manual levers, but they ran on a hydraulic system, and at this speed he expected them to be stuck, which they were.

His eyes strayed to the speedometer, which was pushing the red zone, and to the altimeter, which was getting too low for comfort.

The radio crackled. "Skeeter, this is Popeye. Advise you pull out, do you copy?"

Yuri swallowed. "Copy that." He flipped the switch to cut off the right engine. "Stick is out." He'd be able to work a spin.

The engine cut out, but it didn't matter. The white and black numbers continued to spin down stubbornly, taking him closer to the ground. He stared at the altimeter, hypnotized.

He knew what this was. They all did. There was always that thought in the back of one's mind. It was to be expected. After all, these were the newest planes designed to do the newest things, and someone had to see if they could.

Yuri wiped his sweating palms on his thighs and cleared his mind. A vision of his wife floated in front of his eyes, and he welcomed her sadly. _I'm sorry, darling._

_

* * *

_Pete jumped to his feet, clutching the keyboard with both hands. Half of his headset came off, but the microphone was still there, which was all that mattered. "Skeeter, pull up!"

The rest of the room had gone silent. As one, all eyes turned to the set of screens on the wall.

"Skeeter! Do you copy?"

Pete watched as the screen updated. There was the hard green line representing earth...and there was the blue dashed line of Yuri's plane.

The numbers on the second screen flickered wildly as the x, y, and z-components of the plane's velocity grew and shrank bizarrely. The plane had crashed.

"No!" Pete hurled the keyboard away from him. He'd never lost a pilot before. And Yuri! Why, he'd just had a cup of coffee with Yuri this morning. They'd had the last two cups in the pot. Had that meant something, then?

Pete stared at the screen, where suddenly x and y had started to climb.

"Is that - ?" he croaked, hoping against hope.

Sam looked at Pete with distant sympathy. "Slide," Sam murmured, motioning gently to the numbers on the large screen. "Or the sensors are whacked."

The z-component shot into triple digits.

"It's the sensors," Sam amended quietly.

Pete felt his legs go numb beneath him, and dropped limply into his chair.

* * *

"Man!"

Ranma tensed instantly as his back touched, and then smashed into, something in midair. _Ryoga sure is on his game today_, he thought sourly as he and the thing shot through the air, courtesy Ryoga's punch. He tugged momentarily at the bandanna wound around his eyes, but it had tangled into itself and refused to come free. _What are Ryoga's bandannas made out of, anyway?_ he wondered. He scrabbled for a handhold behind him and felt steel. _Heavy_, his mind groaned. This was going to be a short flight.

_Oh, this is gonna hurt_, Ranma thought, as he squinted beneath the bandanna and watched the ground approach. He kicked his mind into gear. Whatever this thing was, it was giving off a lot of heat...Ranma took a second to make his mind and body grow cold and blank. As the trees rose up below him, he let go, twisting his body around in midair to form a spiral – a frozen one.

"Hiryu Shoten Ha!"

With a dramatic punch upward, Ranma called the dragon tornado to life. The steel thing, the bandanna, and a chunk of Ranma's hair were sucked up into the spiraling winds. Ranma rode the inner wall of the tornado's eye safely, and softly, to the ground.

Ranma watched with interest as Ryoga, who had been bounding triumphantly towards Ranma to assess how damaged Ranma was, got snagged in a wind current and disappeared into the tornado.

Ranma grinned and blew on his fist. With any luck, Ryoga would be lost for weeks. Ranma dusted off his shirt, tugged its ends down, and set off briskly across the field. Kasumi was making cabbage rolls tonight, and Akane was wearing that new short skirt of hers, and he didn't want to miss an extra minute.

* * *

Yuri blinked a couple of times, then automatically switched the right engine back on and leveled out the plane. The controls responded perfectly to his touch. He noticed he was flying upside-down and, with utter detachment, righted the plane in a smooth, textbook-perfect maneuver.

Yuri punched the radio button lightly. "Popeye," he croaked. He was surprised to find that speaking was difficult. "This is Skeeter. Tell the design team there are some bugs they need to work out." He rubbed a hand over his face, barely hearing Pete's joyful, incoherent response, and nosed the plane in towards home.

_

* * *

Please forgive any inaccuracies. I've never flown a plane, nor have I ever known any test pilots. The story just came to me as a neat idea and I wanted to write it._


End file.
